Stalker is my favorite movie. I've watched it about ten times, once inslow motion, and I designed my own edition of Roadside Picnic (google forRoadside Picnic - pick the first PDF result).I general hate all theists, but I actually like the Christian symbolismin Stalker. Mostly because it isn't preachy - Tarkovsky fills his movieswith religious questions, not answers. And it isn't the simplistic "ChristCliff Notes" retelling on the core mythos that's so common in religious art.Aside from Stalker... Nostalghia and Rublyov are brilliant, Ivan & Mirrorare very good, Solaris is good, Sacrifice sucks. Steamroller & Violin isof historic interest only.

Just thinking about this movie makes me want to pull on my hair and roll around on the floor and throw a temper tantrum - anything to prevent anouther twelve hours of watching dudes wallow around in puddles. ANYTHING.

this is like "mindwalk" with a pedigree.― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Monday, May 29, 2006 7:42 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

i just watched this and i liked it a lot, but it did make me think of "mindwalk" once or twice. but even when the script droned on a little, there was still the gorgeous, ominous look and feel of the film. i think its ideas resonate much more in its non-verbal realms than in its dialogue.

it was something to do with soviet bureaucracy. Tarkovsky had already used his whole budget shooting the bulk of the film but the film stock was ruined and the footage was unusable. in order to get funding to reshoot it T had to imply to the authorities that the film was always conceived as two parts and he needed additional funding to shoot part two. i think he actually used the funding for part two to reshoot the whole thing.

Tried for a second time tonight. I'll need to be 100% alert and working on a minimum of 10-hours sleep if I'm ever going to last the whole way--drifted through most of the middle hour tonight. I'll forgo the kind of jokes I used to make when I saw it 15 years ago. The stalker's strong resemblance to Woody Harrelson was distracting.

i'm kind of surprised the some people (vahid!) think the pre-zone section is good and then it goes downhill. i think the getting to the zone section is often messy and boring but once they get there and less starts to happen, plot-wise, the film is electrifying.

I ate a bunch of weed on a train and watched this on my laptop. It blew my goddamn mind. One of my favorite movies, and xp- the film really starts getting good once they reach the zone. Absolutely. Their every step becomes measured, they ruminate, they argue, crazy shit starts happening around them...

Seven years after the making of the film, the Chernobyl accident led to the depopulation of an area rather like that in the film. Some of those employed to take care of the abandoned nuclear power plant refer to themselves as "stalkers" and to the area around the damaged reactor as "The Zone.

I know I should be beyond the point where I feel so personally about things outside of myself (I got shit for saying more or less the same thing about The Tree of Life on the sandbox movie thread) but I wonder if this movie doesn't work as a sort of litmus test about whether or not one feels sure they know what reality really is, or whether they (like I do) are in constant doubt as to what is real and what isn't. Mind, this is drawn from very little experience but I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.

i dunno, i'm quite unsure of myself in certain respects (and full of headstrong confidence in others), but i like stalker and the tree of life primarily because i find them beautiful. i can certainly see why others might dislike either or both. they're long, slow, abstract and arguably pretentious films.